The Lifelong Learner :: Do what you can, with what you have, where you are -Roosevelt ::

This entry is only applicable if you use MovableType.

Are you getting spam comments in you MovableType blog? I see this as a growing problem among many bloggers. A lot of the bloggers are so fed up that they stop comments altogether. I think that’s too extreme. I’ll give you a Anti-spam solution for MovableType that I put in in place (it was suggested to me by a friend ) for my MT blog and that has been working 100%.

What’s the trick? Adding a new, custom, hidden field on the comments form and checking for it when the comment is submitted.

Why does it work? It works because spammers don’t go to your site to post the comment. They use a crawler to do that. And using a crawler, they have to have to same script work for all MovableType, and possible others, blogs. Like I said, it has worked 100% for me — not a single spam comment passed through. How can I tell? That’s the fun out of the solution. I log each request by a spammer in the activity log. The solution presented here does that.

The solution requires some tweaking with couple of MT files. But if you can change couple lines in a file manually, you can do it. It’s a two step process. Very simple.

Step 1: Add a new hidden parameter to your Comment Listing Template

You can find it under TEMPLATES in MT.

Locate the following in that file:

<form method="post" action="/mt/mt-comments.cgi"

Add a new hidden field inside the form. I named the field “saynotospam” but you can name it anything you want. You should, actually, so spammers don’t write the script for it. After you’re done, it will look something like this (you only need to add the bolded code):

<form method="post" action="/mt/mt-comments.cgi" name="comments"onsubmit="this.saynotospam.value='donny';if (this.bakecookie[0].checked) rememberMe(this)">
<input type="hidden" name="saynotospam" />

If you allow to Preview comments, you have to add the field there as well (same code). Plus, if you have the comment enabled/embedded somewhere else, you have to do the same (I had to add it to my Individual Entry Archive).

Step 2: Verify that the parameter exists when MT posts it.

When the MT posts the comment and the field does not exist, you stop it, not letting the comment be added.

Open mt/lib/MT/App/Comments.pm

and add the following in the “post” method (search for it):

sub post {my $app = shift;my $q = $app->{query};
# 7/13/2004 skif (!$q->param('saynotospam')) {$app->log("spammer ignored");return $app->error("get lost");}...}

That’s it. Watch the spam comments in the Activity Log of MT. I had done the above and I have not received a single spam comment. I used to receive couple per week before. Thanks Rob.

I’ve been watching Mozilla struggle for years now. With each release, I was saying to myself, these guys are never going to get it. I’ve been seeing some good things from them, but never as good as Internet Explorer.

Things have changed, however. With the upcoming release of Firefox 1.0, I think Firefox is better than Internet Explorer. I’ve made it my default browser.

There are a couple of reasons why I like it more than IE. First, it is a whole lot more customizable. With the developer support that Mozilla is getting, you can get a good number of extensions. There is one that I have and that I really love. It’s called Adblock, and it’s a top-rated extension. With Adblock, I can remove ads from the sites that I visit on a regular basis. How? Adblock is smart enough to recognize it (with couple of clicks, of course). See the list of extensions here.

Second, Firefox has more features built in. If you ever experience tabbed browsing, you will never want to go back. For real. Built-in shortcuts in favorites is another really cool feature. Let’s say you want to lookup a word in Dictionary.com. You would do first go to Dictionary.com, search for the word, and copy the resulting URL. You paste that URL into the dialog box from New bookmark, add “d” as your Keyword, and replace the word you searched for with “%s.” That’s it. (The process is very simple so I might be complicating it.) After that, anytime you type “d” followed by anything you want to search for, it will go there directly. I defined several Keywords for myself: for Google searching, for stock-chart lookup, and for a dictionary. It’s simple and great.

Third, Firefox is fast. Maybe not as fast as IE, but fast enough. And a lot faster than previous versions of Mozilla/Firefox. I’m saying that because a lot of people say Mozilla is slow, etc. It’s fast, very fast.

Fourth, Firefox is more secure. There is no question about it. If only for the single reason that its market share is small. People don’t bother as much in attacking it.

I like Firefox very much. I’m excited! I like it also because it has a chance to bring competition back to the browser market. I love competition, and anytime you only have one player, it’s called monopoly. That’s not a good situation.

Get Firefox here and try it for yourself.http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

I’m sure that almost everybody experienced their computer running slower and slower as more programs are added. Or simply just by using the computer. So how do you keep your computer running at maximum speeds? I’m going to give you my top reasons that should keep you computer running, well, let’s just say, up to its potential. (And, yeah, I wrote this little guide myself.)

1) Add RAM (Random Access Memory): if you don’t have at least 512MB, add more! This is the single, most important thing that will improve your computer speed. Believe me, you’ll see the difference!

This is the reason: as your computer is running and you are using programs, such as memory eater Office, each program is stored in RAM. As you open new programs, more RAM is needed. If you run short of it, your computer needs to use Virtual Memory (a combination of RAM and your hard disk). So, for instance, when a program requests more RAM and does not find it, your PC will have to swap some older programs to your hard disk (slow operation) to free the RAM. That process will take away valuable PC resources and will make your computer seem slow. A simple solution for that: when your PC asks for it, give it to it, by having spare RAM.

2) De-fragment Your Disk: it should be done probably at least once a month. What happens is that when you move/remove your files the disk, space is getting fragmented (your files are stored in several, different places on hard disk). So. when you’re saving a larger file, it will take a while for your PC to find (or compose) the location (or space) for it — from several chunks, making it a slow operation. If your Hard Disk is not fragmented, it will put it in one, continues place; your PC does not need to search for empty fragments since it will get in on first request.

3) Minimize the number of programs loading on startup. I only have my Firewall and Anti-Virus start each time my computer starts. Every program that loads at startup eats valuable RAM, plus it takes time to load it, making it seem like your computer is slow.

How can you see and remove programs that load on startup? The first place to look on your Windows machine is Start/Programs/Startup. Remove all but the mentioned above from there — most likely, you do not need any other ones.

The second place, harder to find, is msconfig – Start/Run and type msconfig. On the Startup tab you will see all of the programs that load initially (yeah, the list might seem very long — they all start, slowing down your computer!) So which ones do you remove? (You should do this often, as new programs like to get there manually.) On my XP machine I only have a Firewall (Zone Alarm — free), and a Norton Anti-Virus (vptray) checked-off, and yeah, the list is also long on my machine (all, but the 2, unchecked). One little thing, each time you make a change, when you restart, it will give you a warning: Just check of “Don’t show this warning anymore” check-box and you should be fine.

4) Remove Spyware from your computer. What is Spyware? Let me just tell you that you acquire Spyware just by browsing the Internet and installing different programs. (It seems that Spyware is everywhere now, just like SPAM.) They are basically programs/tracking cookies/etc (not necessary stuff) sitting on your computer, taking valuable resources and spying on you! On a recent system scan, my anti-spyware program discovered 69 different objects identified as Spyware. And I haven’t really installed anything and haven’t visited all those sites that you might suspect to have it.

What can you do about? First, get an anti-spam program. There are two good ones that do the job and are FREE: Ad-aware and Spybot – Search And Destroy. I’ve used both, but I like Ad-aware much better. It is simple to use and works great. (The only bad — cumbersome — thing about it, is that you have to individually select all of those objects that you want removed.) I had had some problems with Spybot, but it still does the job, I think.

Second, run the program every couple of weeks, at least. Before you run it, though, make sure you update the definitions (just as in an anti-virus program). It takes around 2 minutes to scan your computer. However, you’ll be amazed how much stuff you’ll find. And removing those intrusions is fun. Plus, most of all, it speeds up your computer.

5) Format the hard disk. If you feel that the above items do not work, the best alternative — having the most visible results, although very radical move — is to format your hard disk. If you have the time, you should do it every year or so — your computer will be running at top speeds (if you also follow the four methods mentioned above).

So, I ask you: Have you seen a difference? I know my computer is running nicely. Some might say, get Linux, I’d say yeah, it might be a solution, but I’m still waiting for more adaptation and ease of use.

Audible.com is a fairly cool service where you download audio books. You can then put those books on a CD or on your compatible MP3 player. It seems like they have a big selection of books. They also have a subscription service.

They have two types of subscriptions. One, for $19.95 per month, where you get any two books in that month. And second, where for $15 you get a book and a periodical (daily, weekly or monthly magazine).

I consider this a pretty good service for somebody like me, who commutes for more than 1/2 hour to work. (It takes me close to an hour each way. ). That’s why I signed up for the first option, where I get two books per month, plus, along with that I get a pretty cool MP3 player. It’s a basic player, but it beats burning each book on a CD: the transfer is quick. One cool thing about it, though, is that whenever I stop it, it remembers the last position I was at (for each book). That’s very helpful.

Overall, I think Audible gives you a pretty good deal. Most of these books are priced more than $20, so it’s like getting one for free each month. Plus, I can finally put my driving time to better use. Uhm… maybe driving will not be that bad after all… See for yourself.

If you don’t have an anti-virus installed on your computer, and don’t want to pay for one, you might want to try one of these, free ones.

Alwil Avast 4 Home Edition: VB100 and ICSA certified, on-access and on-demand scanning, e-mail scanning for Outlook and POP3/SMTP, automatic updates, e-mail technical support, 7.1MB.

Grisoft AVG Anti-Virus System: VB100 and ICSA certified, on-access and on-demand scanning, e-mail scanning for Outlook and Outlook Express, automatic updates, 5.7MB.

H+BEDV Datentechnik AntiVir Personal Edition: ICSA certified, on-access and on-demand scanning but no e-mail scanning, automatic updates (after fairly significant configuration effort), 3.8MB.

Softwin BitDefender Free Edition Version 7: Uses same scanning engine as the VB100- and ICSA-certified Standard Edition, on-access and on-demand scanning but no e-mail scanning, automatic updates, 8.8MB.

See an article at PC World.com here.

I’ve recently come across two very cool RSS readers: Pluck and Bloglines.com. Both are free, by the way. I”ll explain how I use them and which one I like better.

What is an RSS reader? RSS is the new, cool way to distribute your blog, or your website content, i.e., news. I have several news sites that I read and several blogs, so, using an RSS reader I can do it in one place, without going through different sites. It almost feels like reading email: all of the posts that you read are marked accordingly, so you don’t have to look at it again. Plus, an RSS reader can notify you when there is a new entry in any of your subscriptions. It is a very cool technology. If you haven’t tried it, you should. It basically changed (or changes) the way I read/access news and blogs. I’ll tell you about the 2 different readers that I discovered.

Pluck This is my favorite RSS reader. It is a plug-in for IE and uses IE to render pages. That’s very cool, since you can see the actual post right inside it. It is fast, too. When you install Pluck (very easy and fast), it comes pre-installed with several categories (sports, news, business, and more) so even if you don’t have any sites (read below, though ) you can still see how the technology works.

Bloglines.com I like this one as well — I actually use both. It is very easy to use. The advantage of this one is that it sits in one central location, on their server, and you can access it from any computer. That’s a big advantage, I think, because you don’t have to install it on every computer — you can access it at work without installing anything. Bloglines has a count of users that are subscribed to the blog/site that you are retrieving info from — but I think that the count is based on the users from Bloglines.com ((

How do you get new RSS subscriptions? As more and more sites create RSS feeds, you will see a simple XML logo, RSS logo, or other on their sites. Clicking on it, copying the address, and entering that address into the reader does the job. Simple.

To get a feed from this site (yeah, from this site), click on the XML icon in the bottom left corner (last icon) and add the address to the reader. Enjoy.

I love books and I buy a lot of them. (I would say I’m buying a book per month.) Do I spend a lot of money on them? I guess I do, but before I buy any book I do the following to make sure that the book I’m buying is a good one and that I’m getting it at a good price:

1) Read the reviews2) Find the best price available

1: Read the reviews

I use Amazon.com to find out what other readers think about the book. If the book does not have at least 4 stars, I usually don’t buy it. (Unless it was recommended by somebody that I know.) I don’t want to read books that I’m not going to like. I want to read the best books, so that’s why I buy the highest rated books and books recommended by somebody.

On Amazon.com, I also like the lists (recommendations) from other Amazon.com users. A good list tells me which books I might need on any subjects and the reasons why that user thinks so. If I find somebody with a good list, I add him/her to my Favorite People or to my Friends’ List at Amazon.com. Once I know what book I’m going to buy, I find the best price.

2: Find the best price available

I use a book search engine to find a best book deal. I have two websites that do the job for me: FetchBook.info and BookArea.com. Each of these sites looks in around 40 on-line bookstores and gives me a list, sorted by the best book price. I buy based on this list. A lot of times, used books on Amazon.com and Half.com come on top of those lists, so, if I don’t want to search, I buy a used book from those sources.

So there you go. That’s how I buy my books. Hopefully, you can save a buck or two doing it this way. I know I do. Do you have a different, better way? Let us know.